Calling all citizen journalists — we have an app for that

Citizen reporter Juliet Wayne sent us this photo of a new shed on the BHS campus, directly using the Berkeleyside iPhone app.

Berkeleyside was founded by three professional journalists, but we’re ardent believers in the power of citizen journalism, where many members of the community take an active role in collecting and reporting what goes on.

Already, many of the stories we publish here are the result of tips from readers, sent in by email or left in the comments section.

Now we have come up with another way for Berkeleyans to do citizen journalism with one of the features of our Berkeleyside iPhone app — the citizen reporter tab.

Once you have the Berkeleyside app on your iPhone (no Android yet: if you know anything about developing Android apps, we’d like to hear from you), you just click on the citizen reporter tab in order to snap a photo of something you come across while you are our and about in Berkeley. This could be a news-worthy incident — a fire or accident, say — or merely something quirky you notice on your travels. We welcome all manner of tips and observations.

You can also select a photo you’ve already taken and send it directly to Berkeleyside using the app. Either way, add a note about what you are sending and why. Or you can just send us a note without a photo. And we will publish the result.

Of course, if you want to contribute to Berkeleyside without an iPhone, that works too. We’re always happy to hear from people with news tips, story ideas, or a desire to write, take photos or do some audio or video work.

How about an app for droid phones Not everyone in Berkeley is a apple person especially when
ATT service is so bad in Berkeley i phones won’t work at my house in north Berkeley so i went with Verizon droid Don’t be like the rest of Berkeley and alienate the rest of us non sheep!

Lauren: If you read the post, you’ll see that I’d love to do an Android app for Berkeleyside. The problem is there are excellent tools to enable newbie programmers like me to write for iOS, but I haven’t yet found equivalent tools for Android. Hence my plea in the post for anyone who knows about Android apps to get in touch with me.

We were able to develop the Berkeleyside app for very little money — and a reasonable amount of my time. I haven’t yet found that formula for Android.

ccccccccccccccccoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not realy but it is intresting

JP

Hurray for Android, can’t wait to send you photos of unique and ironic scenes. Once I noticed a blanket covered shopping cart with contents safely enwrapped beside a safely enwrapped Jaguar automobile up in North Berkeley.